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Category Archives: Indian/Pakistani

Hope everyone had a great weekend! I felt like it was a busy weekend for most people I know. My wonderful mama was in town so I spent it with good company, playing lots of card games, and consumed copious amounts of chai. I figured I’d learn a new recipe while she’s in town, and since I was cooking for some friends when I got back to the city, she gave me a quick breakdown on how to make an Indian dish, chicken korma.

Chicken korma

This was my first time trying it, and it turned out delicious. When my mom makes it at home, she adds more yogurt and/or water to make it more saucey, but I left it so the gravy is a little thicker. Totally up to you. This, with a little brown rice made it a nice, quick dinner. (Some of the amounts of ingredients are based on what my mom gave me, but some I’m guesstimating on others based on what I did yesterday):
Ingredients
1 lb of boneless chicken
Fried onions (I cut ½ red onion and fried it)
2 tsp Coconut oil (or olive oil to fry)
1 tsp cardamom
1 tsp ginger-garlic paste
½ tsp crushed red pepper
½ green chili pepper, minced
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp turmeric
2 tsp coconut and almond (my mom crushed these together in a food processor, so I’m referring to the mixture)
1 cup plain yogurt

In a pan, warm up the oil, and fry onions and cardamom. When the onions are transparent, add the chicken and the rest of spices (ginger-garlic paste, red pepper, cinnamon, salt, turmeric, coconut and almond), as well as the chicken and sautee. Mix in yogurt. If you want to make it more saucey, add a few tablespoons of water.

Prepared brown rice to eat with it and a samosa :)

Easy dish that I made in 15 minutes, and the spices balanced out the flavors a lot. I’m sure there are a lot of different ways to make this dish, but I’m curious if anyone out there makes it differently.
Enjoy!
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Shy
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Bauli, a company whose signature is their ready-to-eat Italian pastries, recently launched a contest to create a recipe using one of their baked goods. I wanted to try my hand in making something different using their star-shaped Limonce (lemon) cake, and my friend Shazeen suggested trying a traditional Indian/Pakistani sweet shahi tukra (literally translates to ‘royal piece’) which consists of fried dough and a sweet saffron sauce topped with nuts. I never tried making it before but I loved the vision of blending an Italian dessert with and Indian one and seeing what happens. Spoiler: it tasted delicious and the nuts and roses (playing off the rose water infused in the sauce) makes it the prettiest dish too. Check out the recipe below (and vote for it if you like it on their Facebook page HERE)!

2. In a sauce pan, pour 2 tbs of olive oil and a tsp of butter. Warm over medium heat. Fry pieces of the cake until just slightly brown (this happens quickly, each side should take about 30 seconds to a minute depending on the heat).

Frying cake

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4. After frying the cake slices, arrange on a dish as desired. Take sauce and drizzle over and around slices. Sprinkle ground pistachios, whole pistachios, and slice almonds over the dish. To decorate, you can add the edible silver leaf foil, and dried rose buds (we found this at an Indian grocery store — note to NYC’ers, Kalyustan’s has everything you need and some).

Finished!

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Try it and let me know what you think. I loved how the lemon already in the cake blended so well with the pistachio, almond, and saffron spices. If you want to enter your own recipe/photo, check out Bauli’s Facebook page to submit a photo or make sure to hashtag #baulibakeoff on Instagram or Twitter to enter!
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Shy
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I appreciate spontaneous hang outs where I get to discover favorite haunts of friends. Last week, I came across a couple good ones when I decided to join a gold-medal Fisherman and a Foot Model on a Friday night. I’ll refer to them as such, especially since one of them is basically a celebrity in the foot modeling world – think creepy hand model status…but…feet. People even ask to take pics of his feet when he’s wearing sneakers–I mean, think about it. And the Fisherman apparently has had some kind of luck with his catches on his own jaunts, including (but not limited to) catfish, swordfish, and sharks. But…I digress.

Even though you’ll easily want more chana and kababs, save some room for their dessert, namely their falooda (a sweet drink make of rose syrup, vermicelli, milk, and other sweetness) and gulab jamun (I’m not sure how to explain these, they’re deep fried dumplings made of sugar and milk powder and syrup…compact desi funnel cakes? Fried sugary amazingness?). The place and food reminds me about all that’s so unique about the boroughs in NYC – authentic, delicious, and not expensive places to grub make you feel like you’re eating in someone’s home [See Roti Boti, too]. The owner, Yasir, even came and talked to us about growing up in NY and keeping in touch with his cultural roots. NYC is such a melting pot, it makes you appreciate those little things.

We took some chai to go–decidedly, we were cutting it close, since it started to look like people were starting to recognize Foot Model–and since the Fisherman and Foot Model were 1/1 in their restaurant choices, I decided to trust them on their latter suggestion that same night: The Donut Pub in Chelsea. How did I not know this place existed before?

The Donut Pub

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They have fresh doughnuts, and a whole selection of minis if you just want a baby bite. Started by a Wall Street banker, the place is outfitted like an old-fashioned diner which compliments its offerings of old-fashioned classics (cruellers, honey-dipped, and plain glazed). They do however have more updated selections, like those of coconut-covered, red-velvet, and chocolate dipped chocolate chip varieties.

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They melt in your mouth and are the perfect balance of gooey-crumbly-light-flavorful deliciousness. Try it. Work it off the next day. Feel happy. Repeat.
Restaurant Info:Gourmet
72-08 Broadway
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
Queens
(718) 533-8700REPORT CARD
Meal: Dinner
Price: $
(Out of three stars)
Ambiance: ***
Food: ***
Service: ***
Would I go back?: Only if the Foot Model won’t embarrass us by rejecting autographs again, definitelyThe Donut Pub
203 W. 14th St.,
at Seventh Ave
New York, NY 10011
(212) 929-0126
ChelseaREPORT CARD
Meal: Way too late to be up and eating dessert
Price: $
(Out of three stars)
Ambiance: ***
Food: ***
Service: **
Would I go back?: I still taste the red velvet in my mouth, so Yes

The Donut Pub

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Gourmet

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Shy
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I figure I should make this its own post first because so many of my recipes start out with kheema (ground beef). Kheema is one of my favorite things to eat at home with rice, and it’s soo easy to make.

My mom came to visit for the long weekend (yaay!), and I was able to take full advantage by cooking with her. Usually when I say I want to cook with her, I’ll go upstairs for a second and come down to find the food is already made. This happens often. But I learned my lesson and didn’t veer too far this time. Hence, she taught me a super easy way to make tandoori chicken wings.

Spices

INGREDIENTS:
4 lbs of chicken wings
4 tsp of Tandoori masala (we used this one from Rajah)
2 tsp of ginger garlic paste
2 tsp of cumin powder
Salt to taste (we used about 2 tsp)
1/4 cup yogurt
DIRECTIONS:
1. Mix all the above ingredients with yogurt in a small bowl.
2. After washing the wings, use the marinade to fully cover the wings. Tip: Use disposable gloves to keep hands clean while doing this!

Marination

3. After coating the wings completely, place them in a large Ziploc bag and place in fridge for at least four hours (preferably overnight). Don’t leave any of the sauce behind! Pour any extra sauce into the bag.

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Ready to be put in the fridge

4. Pre-heat over to 350 degrees. Place wings on a rectangle baking pan. Stick in oven and bake for 30-40 minutes. Every oven is a different so keep an eye on it!

Anyone going to try it? It came out delicious, if I do say so myself
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Shy
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If you guys were not in New York to experience the winter storm, this “nor’easter” as they call it (clearly, the first time I’ve ever heard that term in my life which says a lot coming from a Chicagoan)…just know it was no joke.

NYC yesterday (pic: daily beast)

The wind, the snow, the cold, the puddles…it was not a day to be outside at all. Just go home, throw your soaked socks in the hamper, and jump under a fleece on the couch, and watch copious amounts of TV. Everyone else? They’re idiots.

Unfortunately, I was one of those idiots. But for good reason, I swear: My friend, Asif Ali, was performing at the famous Carolines on Broadway for the NY Comedy Festival’s Comics to Watch, and the line up quickly proved to be worth trekking through the snow for the show (ok maybe it was just six blocks of trekking for me, but…irrelevant).

Carolines

After the show, it was only reasonable to finally come to our senses and go back home once the blistering cold air hit our faces on the way out. But by then, a group had formed…a very resilient group…that just wanted chai.

“Cool,” I said. “There’s Haandi or COP not too far from here…” Even while I was saying it, it sounded too far. Which makes it only more mind boggling as to why I would instead agree to catch a train up to Astoria for Roti Boti. The cold clearly numbs decision-making.

But our friend Aman said it would be worth it sloshing through the snow for. “It’s Ron Artest’sMetta World Peace‘s favorite ‘Pakistinian’ joint in New York!” (His words, not mine). I looked EVERYWHERE for this endorsement from Metta on YouTube to share with you all [which, side note, searching Metta World Peace for anything online is kinda one of my favorite things to do when I’m bored so this was a treat]. Sadly, I only found references to it so this video below, although unrelated, was the best I could do:

Anyway. I’ve been to Roti Boti only once before, and all I remember was I was fasting and inhaled my food so fast when it was time to break, that I had no memory of if the food was even good or not. Honestly, anything would have tasted good after 14 hours of not eating. Good thing for us, we made it to to the restaurant and when we saw its big family-style dining table RIGHT next to a heater, it was clearly understood to be a sign from God that we made the right decision.

Roti Boti

There’s no frills about this place (ie. peeling paint on the walls, cardboard on the floor and exposed boxes everywhere), but if you consider the desi-family-standard Corelle plates you have to just assume you’re going to get a little piece of home in your meal too.

Correle plates...yeah!

Thankfully, the chicken tikka masala with naan didn’t disappoint.

Stack of naan

Anyone wanna guess how hungry I was when I took this pic? Clearly not caring.

The saddest part about this post are clearly my food pics — I had no camera and my phone died so I had to basically keep stealing my friend’s camera to take these subpar ones. PLUS I completely neglected to take pics of the tandoori chicken, lamb chops AND chai which all were equally delicious…count the good company, yes, it was totally worth that trek. Plus, a meal with chai that came out to $46 total for six people, we had cab money left over too. What? Did you think we’d walk it back too? We’re not crazy.REPORT CARD
Meal: Dinner/In search of chai
Price: $
(Out of three stars)
Ambiance: *
Food: ***
Service: **
Would I go back?: For a late night bite, it really hit the spot. YES if I’m in the area, or in a mind-numbing-cold-weather situation again
Restaurant Info:Roti Boti
2709 21st Street at Astoria Blvd.
Astoria, NY 11102
(718) 278-7888
Queens
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Shy
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